Office Location: 322 Allen Building
Office Phone: (919) 668-2547
Email Address: rmitch@duke.edu

Teaching (Spring, 2012):

• English 125.01, Eng lit romantic period Synopsis

  Gray 228, TuTh 10:05 AM-11:20 AM

• Lit 255.02, Phenomenology, neurosci, media Synopsis

  West duke 08a, Th 01:15 PM-03:45 PM

Office Hours:

Spring 2012
Wednesdays by appointment only
(please email rmitch@duke.edu at least two days
prior to desired appointment)

Education:

Ph.D., University of Washington

Specialties:

British Literature
Romanticism
Eighteenth Century Literature
Science and Literature
Critical Theory

Robert Mitchell is interested in relationships between the sciences and prose and poetry of the Romantic era, and in the role of theories of emotional communication (for example, sympathy and identification) in eighteenth-century and Romantic-era philosophy and literature. He is also interested in contemporary intersections between information technologies, genetics, and commerce, especially as these have been played out in the legal, literary, and artistic spheres. He has published articles about the role of sympathy and systems in Adam Smith's moral philosophy, the vision of science in Percy Bysshe Shelley's early poetry, and Coleridge's interest in the sacrifices demanded by systems, among other topics. He has published two monographs: Sympathy and the State in the Romantic Era: Systems, State Finance, and the Shadows of Futurity (Routledge, 2007) and Bioart and the Vitality of Media (University of Washington Press, 2010). He is co-author of the monograph Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism (Duke UP, 2006) and the DVD-ROM Biofutures: Owning Body Parts and Information (U of Pennsylvania P, 2008). He is also co-editor of two collections of essays--Semiotic Flesh: Information and the Human Body (University of Washington Press, 2002) and Data Made Flesh: Embodying Information (Routledge, 2003)--and co-editor of the book series In Vivo: The Cultural Mediations of Biomedical Science (University of Washington Press). He is currently working on a monograph on the role of experimentation in Romantic-era vitalist science and literature.

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. with J. Khalip. Releasing the Image: From Literature to New Media.  Stanford University Press, 2011. [ref=sr_1_1]
2. R. Mitchell et. al. "Genomics, Biobanks, and the Trade-Secret Model." Science 332 (15 April 2011): 309-310.
3. R. Mitchell. "Suspended Animation, Slow Time, and the Poetics of Trance." PMLA 126.1 (2011): 107-122.
4. R. Mitchell. "Cryptogamia." European Romantic Review 21.5 (2010): 631-51.
5. R. Mitchell. Bioart and the Vitality of Media. University of Washington Press, 2010. [ref=sr_1_1]
6. with C. Waldby. "National Biobanks: Clinical Labour, Risk Production, and the Creation of Biovalue." Science, Technology, and Human Values 35.3 (2010): 330-355.
7. with Helen Burgess, Phillip Thurtle. Biofutures: Owning Body Parts and Information. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. (DVD-ROM) [html]
8. R. Mitchell. "‘Beings that have existence only in ye minds of men’: State Finance and the Origins of the Collective Imagination." The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 49.2 (2008): 117-139.
9. R. Mitchell. "Sacrifice, Individuation, and the Economics of Genomics." Literature and Medicine 26.1 (Spring, 2007): 126-158.
10. R. Mitchell. "The Fane of Tescalipoca: S. T. Coleridge on the Sacrificial Economies of Systems in the 1790s." Studies in Romanticism 46.1 (2007): 105-27.
11. with P. Thurtle. "‘The Acme Novelty Library’: Comic Books, Repetition, and the Return of the New." Configurations 15.3 (2007): 267–297.
12. R. Mitchell. Sympathy and the State in the Romantic Era: Systems, State Finance, and the Shadows of Futurity. Routledge, 2007. [102-8880685-5627335]
13. with C. Waldby. Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism. Duke University Press, 2006. [102-8880685-5627335]
14. with P. Thurtle. Data Made Flesh: Embodying Information.  Routledge, 2003 [104-7461896-1670304]

More Information:

Director, Center for Interdiscipinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory

Faculty: Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy

Affiliated Faculty: Women's Studies